tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post832950903166344120..comments2018-03-18T22:03:01.082-04:00Comments on History Unfolding: It didn't start with TrumpDavid Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05020082243968071584noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-89582019838060460832017-03-21T09:44:13.418-04:002017-03-21T09:44:13.418-04:00Professor
Great post. Interesting comparisons.
E...Professor<br />Great post. Interesting comparisons. <br /><br />Everyone here by now perhaps knows I don&#39;t follow S &amp; H. <br /><br />I remark on it, however,in connection with Professor Kaiser&#39;s informative discussion and reference, of how Bannon has picked it up and used it.<br /><br />Re &quot;It Didn&#39;t Start With Trump&quot;, my view has been that the last big crisis (in my terminology, not S &amp; H) for the West, began around 1760, as Robert Palmer had asserted. <br /><br />My view is that that crisis never has ended, but rather has been transformed.<br /><br />All the bestBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-36382124479013424492017-03-20T15:17:58.457-04:002017-03-20T15:17:58.457-04:00I am not sure I quite understand preoccupation wit...I am not sure I quite understand preoccupation with identifying &quot;the&quot; date: crisis is a period and our American crisis corresponds with the earlier period of crisis that spanned nearly 20 years, encompassing the economic collapse of the Great Depression and the political trial of the Second World War. That was a period of intense institution building and those institutions have passed their sell-by date.<br /><br />The generational driver of institutional aging is embodied in the knowledge or ignorance of subsequent generations of the architectural principles and managerial imperatives. The inventors of new institutions do not always completely understand them -- they may well have ideas that seem quaint in retrospect, but if those institutions find their groove and survive to improve the functioning of society, experience will provide some rationale. The rationale the baby boomers were handed by Milton Friedman (b 1912), against the opposition of John Kenneth Galbraith (b 1908), was one that we now call, &quot;neoliberalism&quot;: a new rationale for individualism and laissez faire, which is a prescription for fatuous irresponsibility.<br /><br />It seems to me that we have seen that fatuous irresponsibility in the cavalier way both Clinton and the GWB administrations embraced neoliberal deregulation. On a deeper level, we saw it in the abandonment of the institutions of countervailing power so carefully nurtured during the Progressive Movement and its echo in the New Deal: the wiping out of the Savings &amp; Loans, the erosion of labor union membership and so on. We could see in the fatuous way George W Bush attempted to echo the rhetoric of Churchill in pursuing the vision of the Project for a New American Century, and its almost demented misunderstanding of the bases for the American alliance structures after WWII and particularly the alliances with Germany and Japan.<br /><br />We are in the midst of a great legitimacy crisis that has been building since the Clinton impeachment, a legitimacy crisis based in large part on the suspicion that the political classes are, in the main, incompetent and uncaring, a proposition for which there is abundant evidence with the partisan labels of both Parties as well as the non-partisan labels affixed to the Media and many nominally non-political institutions. <br /><br />I don&#39;t believe we are going &quot;to turn this around&quot; -- certainly no forces of history will provide a deus ex machina. The system will fail, and as in 2008, the corrective action taken is likely to be painful and socially corrupting and add to the crisis of legitimacy. Peter Turchin&#39;s work, positing a rising cycle of violence to 2020, is likely to find abundant confirmation.<br /><br />Our domestic economic arrangements have been confirmed in their pattern of excessive debt channelling ever more resources into the hands of fewer. It is the international arrangements which will next meet their test, with the economic crisis in China and Europe reverberating to the U.S., while the U.S. discovers just what it means to lose a long war. The economic phase -- the one corresponding to 1932 -- is behind us, though we may see a 1936-like renewal of the crisis that leads to doubling-down on austerity. Many of the details of the New Deal legacy were the result of revisions after 1936. What is becoming acute is the phase corresponding to the initiation of a new world order during and immediately after the war, in 1941-47. The crisis is now underway, but in China and in Europe. For the U.S., all that awaits us some signal defeat of our vaunted military that causes us to finally withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan. Then, it will be the military&#39;s turn for a loss of legitimacy, honor and respect.Bruce Wilderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09631065564839959376noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-30409651270507299572017-03-20T14:47:32.666-04:002017-03-20T14:47:32.666-04:00Perhaps I am the stupid one, but I have a hard tim...Perhaps I am the stupid one, but I have a hard time biting into this idea that the 60&#39;s and onward created a reckless individualism as perscribed by Strauss-Howe, when this is the same timeframe that LBJ&#39;s great society is formed. These two concepts seem diametrically opposed, to me atleast.<br /><br />Please respond with your opinion on this disconnect between theory and application. Again, a very interesting readtmaushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12833229739196444756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-66321087408237474822017-03-19T12:35:58.228-04:002017-03-19T12:35:58.228-04:00I was interested in seeing &quot;The Fourth Turnin...I was interested in seeing &quot;The Fourth Turning&quot; make into a more mainstream discussion at the Crooks &amp; Liars website, as a discussion was had of the new Trump budget proposal, based on Steve Bannon&#39;s influence.<br /><br />http://crooksandliars.com/2017/03/donald-trumps-punitive-bannonesque-fourthWes Volkenanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03716986671259176775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-30948966426842976902017-03-19T00:55:10.128-04:002017-03-19T00:55:10.128-04:00With Steve Bannon&#39;s interest in &quot;The Four...With Steve Bannon&#39;s interest in &quot;The Fourth Turning&quot; becoming more widely-known, it leads to a wider use of the principles from the book in the media.<br /><br />Case in point, this Crooks and Liars essay following the release of the Trump budget this week....<br /><br />http://crooksandliars.com/2017/03/donald-trumps-punitive-bannonesque-fourthWes Volkenanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03716986671259176775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-31454666928441215962017-03-18T21:46:24.311-04:002017-03-18T21:46:24.311-04:00“One function of a Crisis or Fourth Turning is to ...“One function of a Crisis or Fourth Turning is to renew civic virtue and cooperation as the nation copes with internal or external threat. That was what Bush II was trying to do after 9/11…”<br /><br />I, and the people I knew followed Bush’s call for virtue and cooperation just as he had ordered: We went shopping. We spent our tax cuts. Bush got “reelected”, and we all felt wonderful that we had done our part in America’s renewal. Crisis solved!Gloucon Xhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05218027862578514587noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-50471452271594819092017-03-18T18:50:56.357-04:002017-03-18T18:50:56.357-04:00I agree with 2001 because it seems, IMO, that, in ...I agree with 2001 because it seems, IMO, that, in an outcome now well recognized by Strauss and Howe, the post-war High was the first truly Global High, produced by the war&#39;s imposition on a preponderance of the world&#39;s people and nations as well as the highly structured yet integrated nature of the Cold War recovery in both camps. As a result, the entire saeclum would also be global in scale and impact, with the decisive forces and events arising across the globe. And it must also be global in its resolution. Though led by ideologically backward forces, 9/11 was certainly an expression of the desperation and rage that has fueled a widening array of social resistance movements in the years since. The 2007-08 financial crisis and Occupy Wall Street lent clarity on the true nature of the necessary resolution (democratization of finance, corporate accountability, etc.) in what, clearly, is an on-going popular struggle.Rather than looking for ways to stretch this turning, I think it wiser to to see the rapid and continuing acceleration of the crisis and resistance since 2001 as the darkest darkness before the dawn. Civilization is in crisis, but people have lost confidence in, especially, the corporate elite and their politicians and are seeking remedy. Let&#39;s help everyone understand that it must be a global remedy, not merely an eclectic array of new national Highs arising from merely national Crises.Steve Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04739721285886013832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-66878731737929741952017-03-18T16:23:46.538-04:002017-03-18T16:23:46.538-04:00@MikeC - Boomers (1943-65) ran over the Silents (1...@MikeC - Boomers (1943-65) ran over the Silents (1925-42) with a generational bulldozer. Obama, mind you, is an early Xer, and tried very, very hard to be D.D. Eisenhower. Excellent man, wrong times. My daughters are both Xers in every way and I know the signs. And BTW, the criterion I use is &quot;Those with no conscious memory of the last social moment.&quot; Which makes every grandchild I have (ages 16-9), not Millennial, but Homelander. And they are showing all this signs of it as well - it takes one to know one, as they say. <br /><br />No, I&#39;ll go with 2000. Besides, the economic collapse for the middle classes was well underway by then. (The blue-collar collapse had been gong on since the early 1970, but who cared? Buncha rednecks... grrrrrr......we&#39;re now reaping what we sowed then.)<br /><br />Patricia Mathews, formerly haunting the 4T forums. Pity Neil Howe is too bound up in selling management advice to give us some analysis here. <br /><br />Okay. You can pass the cat food now.Patricia Mathewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11875439585157447036noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-83537829610781282362017-03-18T16:16:23.538-04:002017-03-18T16:16:23.538-04:00I&#39;ll cheerfully go with 2000. Alas, the climax...I&#39;ll cheerfully go with 2000. Alas, the climax (the Regeneracy? I do hate to use the term but technically it&#39;s the correct one) was last November. I&#39;m among the wait-and-sees. partly a generational thing on my part (born in 1939), which makes me a Traitor To The Resistance. (Eek! We MUST fight Gorsuch, he was WRONG about the Hobby Lobby Decision! Traitor. Never mind that he&#39;s sane, competent, and understands Western issues, which puts him 3-up on most of that crowd.)<br /><br />The tides of time are moving very swiftly, and I have always been convinced we are in not only a Crisis, but a MegaCrisis. Example of the latter: The Wars of the Roses. i.e. England may have felt they were still in the Middle Ages clear on up to the Cavalier Era, but the Tudor regime was a whole different thing in every respect. <br /><br />Well, welcome to Round Two of Post-Western-Civilization (Western Civ 2.1, Western Civ 1.n having committed suicide in 1914, touching off Round One. For further details apply to anyone English.)Patricia Mathewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11875439585157447036noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-82739936360745765852017-03-18T08:00:10.293-04:002017-03-18T08:00:10.293-04:00I would agree with Mike C above but otherwise your...I would agree with Mike C above but otherwise your criticism of military adventurism, spending is correct. We create our own enemies. Spiral of violence. Hedonism internally leads to social collapse. Militarism abroad or civil conflict brings resolution to this collapse. <br /><br />To put a point on it. Society was not collapsing in 2000 so a resolution was not necessary. The excessive militarism with accompanying tax cuts plus ongoing bubbles in economy to maintain hedonism have led to collapse which must now force a resolution. The al quaeda saw that they could provoke us to self destruction through military overengagement. Sun Tzu&#39;s Art of War was probably useful in this. The bubbleblowing economy was our own selfish hedonism. The generational structure allowed this to occur, made it inevitable. Digging our way out of the debt is impossible without bankruptcy at all levels of society. America was not ordained by God to police earth and can no more afford it than Europe or British earlier. Average historical interst rates would bankrupt the govt. The American century is ending in a disaster unfortunately. Russia, China, Iran must simply wait out the results. Recall this was our tactic with Soviets.ed boylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14476915209268786507noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-27499952374170894502017-03-18T06:35:23.351-04:002017-03-18T06:35:23.351-04:00As much as I abide by your holding to Fourth Turni...As much as I abide by your holding to Fourth Turning thinking, I&#39;m somewhat disappointed and surprised that you, Mr. Kaiser, abide by the popular narrative concerning 9/11.m riestererhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10726361519133079799noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-74842638056828973732017-03-17T15:48:22.308-04:002017-03-17T15:48:22.308-04:00I have to respectfully disagree Mr. Kaiser
The po...I have to respectfully disagree Mr. Kaiser<br /><br />The position of the various generations in their phases of life was not quite right in 2001. Boomers were still in the early years of power, and a large number of Silents still held positions of peak influence.<br /><br />Most importantly, Millennials were not yet in a position to become the Heroes of the Iraq war. Troops on the ground were primarily Gen X, with a smattering of Millennials at the lower ranks.<br /><br />The 2008 Crisis however put a great pressure on the young Hero Generation, and was arguably created by the individualist policies of Boomer Idealism. The New Order arising in the world today (Populist Nationalism) is a direct byproduct of the anxieties of the global financial Crisis, especially lingering unemployment in Europe.<br /><br />The events of 2001 have sowed the seeds for many aspects of the Crisis, as WWI did in the previous Turning, but they were firmly a part of the Unraveling.<br /><br />Thanks for the insightful article Professor. I look forward to your thoughts on this!Mike Chttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06537457259474280245noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-13379363696806207992017-03-17T13:50:30.462-04:002017-03-17T13:50:30.462-04:00Impressive commentary,David.. right on targetImpressive commentary,David.. right on targetkjmcginhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01762497937756013361noreply@blogger.com